Low cost wind displacing coal – 56GW of coal at risk, that’s a big number – about 16% of the current stock around 339GW of coal. If wind runs at a 35% capacity factor and coal is around 60%, that’d mean about 96GW of wind to replace the at risk product – that would more than double the current US wind capacity. That’d be a lot of progress

‘We consider that to be a waste of money’ – US pressures G-20 on finer points of trade language, very blunt regarding climate change. I hope this is one time the private world will step in looking for profit, and build those 96GW of wind needed across the US Midwest and a whole lot more.

1GW of solar going to Turkey at 7¢/kWh with requirements that large chunks of the hardware must be manufactured locally – If we’re going to need hundreds of MW installed per year, we’re going to need more factories. As these factories are more robots than anything, they can be built and operated in many varied places within in a relatively tight price range. Of course, as China has proven, it is supply chain that is all powerful (not labor) today – so maybe building factories globally won’t be as easy and cost effective as the laws forcing it to happen can be signed.

Is 2017 the year where I only cover 1GW solar farms or larger?

$7,500/turbine/year – Wikipedia says these are 1.5MW or 2.3MW units, somewhere between – $3,200 and 5,000/MW/year. Of course that number will change based upon – wind resources available and energy pricing being the main driver. You’re not gonna hurt wind or solar power from places like Washington DC with places like Texas and California in support of it. Check out Secretary of Energy Rick Perry in the tweet below hawking drone inspection of turbines – interesting parallel to the robots cleaning solar panels.

Now THIS is cool! An automated drone inspects a wind turbine, making it easier and faster to collect data. pic.twitter.com/vX6EyQ72oq

Small solar that replaces indoor cooking is huge for health, letting kids study for school is another I hear about. I’ve built off grid housing 1-3kW of solar plus batteries that offer respectable living standards (fridge, light, etc). I don’t know the mix of the solar portion of what is being defined as ‘electrified’ in the below chart – but from what I read it is a combination of a few solar panels a few hundred watts each for a private home through microgrids in the 5 to 100kW powering communities. Small distributed energy systems will bring electricity to a billion or two over the next 10 to 20 years

Thanks to Coal Power, Kenya’s Electricity Access Was 27% In 2013. Mostly Thanks to Renewables, It's Now 55% And Will Reach 95% By 2020 pic.twitter.com/C25Jgp4xkg